• Home  ›
• Sermons  ›
• God and “Things”

---

Christ Church Episcopal and Trinity Lutheran Sheffield, Massachusetts

God and “Things”

Sermon by Fleming Rutledge July 24, 2011

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.(Romans 8:28)

The passage appointed for today, Romans 2:18-39, is the most beloved and best known part of Romans. You have perhaps heard it read at funerals. The last sentence (8:39) is the best known, and no wonder. Today we’re going to look at an almost equally well-known line in the middle. In this translation, the NRSV, it reads as follows:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,

who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

But in the older Revised Standard Version, it reads like this:

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

What’s the difference between these two translations, and, more important, what difference does it make to us?

Now we’re going to shift from biblical quotations to contemporary quotations. Have you heard people say, “Things have a way of working out in the end,” or “things will work out for the best”? I asked a friend of mine who has had much sickness and trouble if she had heard that saying. She said she had heard it hundreds of times, and she made a face as if to say she didn’t find it helpful at all.

The first translation, the one in your program, makes “things” the subject of the sentence. “Things” will work themselves out. It sounds as though “things” have an animate life, that somehow “things” are able to act to make everything come out right. And so, a great many good Christian people will refer to the Romans verse this way:

We know that all things work together for good…(NRSV)

Instead of this way:

In all things God works for good…(RSV)

Now, it’s true that the original Greek text is somewhat disputed. It’s possible to translate it either way. But for those who are intimately familiar with the way that Paul thinks and the way the Bible works, there can only be one correct translation. More about that in a minute. First, though, let’s take a look at some other common sayings that people use in trying to comfort others.

Take for instance a person who regrets the outcome of something. People will say, “You did what you had to do.” The idea is to help the person to feel that, whatever it was, he or she shouldn’t feel guilty. But how is this different from the Nazis who said, “I was just following orders”? Well, maybe that’s pushing it too far. But here is a clipping from the newspaper. It’s a story about the experiences of soldiers in wartime. It’s by the well-known writer Sebastian Junger. He tells of a young soldier whom he befriended when he was writing a book about a remote military outpost in Afghanistan. The young man has had difficulty re-entering peacetime society. He has been suffering from the memory of the innocent civilians that he had killed. Here’s what he said:

“Everyone tells you that you did what you had to do, and I just hate that comment. I didn’t have to do any of it. I didn’t have to join the Army; I didn’t have to become airborne infantry….That comment, ‘you did what you had to do’—just drives me insane. Because is that what God’s going to say? ‘You did what you had to do? Welcome to heaven’? I don’t think so.”[1]

That young man was crying out for someone to say something that would acknowledge the pain of war, the death of non-combatants, the fury and folly of it all. He doesn’t want easy forgiveness. He doesn’t want civilians who never served in the armed forces to tell him that he shouldn’t feel bad. He already knows that war is hell; he doesn’t need anyone to say it. He knows that “things” do not always work out for the best. He is groping for something beyond that.

Here’s another story. In April, an experienced, dedicated nurse in Seattle committed suicide. After 27 years of flawless performance in a pediatric intensive care unit, she made a fatal mistake in a dosage. She was fired from the job she loved, and a baby was dead. Seven months later, the nurse was dead too, by her own hand.[2] I found myself wondering about the things that people would have said to the nurse after the baby’s death. I think we can be sure they said things like, “Everyone makes mistakes,” “You didn’t mean it,” “You didn’t do it on purpose,” Nobody’s perfect,” and other remarks of that nature. But these words did not touch the pain that the nurse suffered. When a baby dies as a result of a mistake, there are no words. “Things” do not work out for the best.

The entire Epistle to the Romans is oriented to something entirely different from “things.” It is oriented to the righteousness of God and the power of God to make right what is wrong. That’s what the 8^th chapter, in particular, is about. “Things” don’t work out, for this reason: the whole creation, Paul writes, has been ”subjected to futility.” The creation is “in bondage to decay.” It is groaning in pain.

But beyond this groaning in futility and decay there lies a hope that is beyond human hope (Romans 4:18). Because of this hope Paul can say that the groaning of the creation is like labor pains. There is a new world yet to come. The apostle continues:

We groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as [God’s] sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:23-25, emphasis added).

What is this hope against hope (Romans 4:18) that we cannot yet see? What is it that the creation awaits? Is it waiting for “things” to work out? Or are we waiting for the living God who is at work in and through “things” according to his purpose?

People are probably always going to say, “Well, in the end it all worked out for the best.” It’s the default position for us when we don’t know what else to say. Christians, however, will say something quite different: “God was at work in this all along, though we could not see him.” And the strangest thing of all is that God will be at work in a way that looks like crucifixion.[3]

No, “things” do not always work out for the best in this world. War creates victims on both sides of every conflict. Errors and carelessness happen even in the famous teaching hospitals.[4] Children die young for no discernible reason. People we love get cancer. Millions of people die of malnutrition and mistreatment in war zones and no one even remembers their names. Very, very rich people live in luxurious towers far above the struggles of the invisible poor. The misdeeds of the high and mighty are covered up while others pay the price. There are so many “things” that are wrong. And if we are really honest as Christian people, we know that deep down inside of our very own individual selves there is something that we wish was not there, something we would like to get rid of but do not know how. There are no solutions to these “things” within the realm of human competence.

Now I have discovered in my thirty-six years of ministry that there are a lot of people who, though they attend church regularly, don’t really believe in God. It’s strange, but it’s true. Some of these people are close friends of mine. Maybe some of you are in that category. There is a mystery about who has faith and who doesn’t. There isn’t anything I can say that can call forth belief where there isn’t any.

But the claim of these biblical messages that we read week after week, year after year, is that they bring news from somewhere beyond the realm of human competence. These messages are from the One who, as Paul writes in chapter 4 of Romans, is able to call into existence the things that do not exist. There may be someone here this morning, right now, someone who, like the young soldier, is groping for something beyond the clichés. There may be someone here this morning who is hearing for the first time, or in a new way, that God is able to raise the dead; that God’s righteousness is active and powerful to make every “thing” right that is wrong, able to make every “thing” new that is old, able to make every “thing” happy that is dismal and sad and irreparable in this world; that God is able to keep his promises.

No, “things” do not work out right. But the message this morning from the 8^th chapter of Romans is this: in all things, God is working for good for those who love him.

So if at this moment you feel a little prickle of hope, then perhaps you can hear the end of the chapter in a new way. These are not religious sayings that Paul has put together to make us feel better. These are words about the God who is really God, who is able to do what “things” can never do. Listen for the Word of the Lord:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?....

No! in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any thing else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

---

[1] Sebastian Junger, “Why Would Anyone Miss War?” The New York Times 7/17/11.

[2] Theresa Brown, R. N. “Big or Small, Nurses’ Mistakes Reverberate.” The New York Times, 7/12/2011.

[3] I recognize that this is only a hint of the suffering and self-offering of Christ as the heart and center of Christian ethics. Many sermons over a period of months and years are required to expound this fully so that it is “inwardly digested” (Book of Common Prayer) by a congregation.

[4] This is personal to me; the grandchild of a friend died needlessly as the result of a mistake at the world-renowned Johns Hopkins medical center.

---

Related: